And, while the careless wanderer explores,
The umbrageous forest, or the rugged shores,
Climbs the green down, or roams the broom-clad waste,
May Truth, and Nature, form his future taste!
Goddess! on youth’s bless’d hours thy gifts bestow;
Bind the fair wreath on virgin-beauty’s brow,
And still may Fancy’s brightest flowers be wove
Round the gold chains of hymeneal love.
But most for those, by Sorrow’s hands oppress’d,
May thy beds blossom, and thy wilds be dress’d;
And where by Fortune and the world forgot,
The mourner droops in some sequester’d spot,
““Sad luxury to vulgar minds unknown,”“
O’er blighted happiness for ever gone,
Yet the dear image seeks not to forget,
But woos his grief, and cherishes regret;
Loving, with fond and lingering pain, to mourn
O’er joys and hopes that never will return; —
Thou, visionary power! mayst bid him view
Forms not less lovely, and as transient too;
And while they soothe the wearied pilgrim’s eyes,
Afford an antepast of Paradise.
STUDIES BY THE SEA.
AH! wherefore do the incurious say,
That this stupendous ocean wide,
No change presents from day to day,
Save only the alternate tide;
Or save when gales of summer glide
Across the lightly crisped wave;
Or, when against the cliff’s rough side,
As equinoctial tempests rave,
It wildly bursts; o’erwhelms the deluged strand,
Tears down its bounds, and desolates the land?
He who with more enquiring eyes
Doth this extensive scene survey,
Beholds innumerous changes rise,
As various winds its surface sway;
Now o’er its heaving bosom play
Small sparkling waves of silver gleam,
And as they lightly glide away
Illume with fluctuating beam
The deepening surge; green as the dewy corn
That undulates in April’s breezy morn.
The far off waters then assume
A glowing amethystine shade,
That changing like the peacock’s plume
Seems in celestial blue to fade;
Or paler, colder hues of lead,
As lurid vapours float on high,
Along the ruffling billows spread,
While darkly lours the threatening sky;
And the small scatter’d barks with outspread shrouds,
Catch the long gleams, that fall between the clouds.
Then day’s bright star with blunted rays
Seems struggling thro’ the sea-fog pale,
And doubtful in the heavy haze,
Is dimly seen the nearing sail;
‘Till from the land a fresher gale
Disperses the white mist, and clear,
As melts away the gauzy veil,
The sun-reflecting waves appear;
So, brighter genuine virtue seems to rise
From envy’s dark invidious calumnies.
What glories on the sun attend,
When the full tides of evening flow,
Where in still changing beauty, blend
With amber light, the opal’s glow;
While in the east the diamond bow
Rises in virgin lustre bright,
And from the horizon seems to throw,
A partial line of trembling light
To the hush’d shore; and all the tranquil deep
Beneath the modest moon, is sooth’d to sleep.
Forgotten then, the thundering break
Of waves, that in the tempest rise,
The falling cliff, the shatter’d wreck,
The howling blast, the sufferer’s cries;
For soft the breeze of evening sighs,
And murmuring seems in Fancy’s ear
To whisper fairy lullabies,
That tributary waters bear
From precipices, dark with piny woods,
And inland rocks, and heathy solitudes.
The vast encircling seas within,
What endless swarms of creatures hide,
Of burnish’d scale, and spiny fin!
These providential instincts guide,
And bid them know the annual tide,
When, from unfathom’d waves that swell,
Beyond Fuego’s stormy side,
They come, to cheer the tribes that dwell
In Boreal climes; and thro’ his half year’s night
Give to the Lapland savage, food and light.
From cliffs, that pierce the northern sky;
Where eagles rear their sanguine brood,
With long awaiting patient eye,
Baffled by many a sailing cloud,
The Highland native marks the flood,
Till bright the quickening billows roll,
And hosts of sea-birds, clamouring loud,
Track with wild wing the welcome shoal,
Swift o’er the animated current sweep,
And bear their silver captives from the deep.
Sons of the North! your streamy vales
With no rich sheaves rejoice and sing;
Her flowery robe no fruit conceals,
Tho’ sweetly smile your tardy spring;
Yet every mountain, clothed with ling,
Doth from its purple brow survey
Your busy sails, that ceaseless bring
To the broad frith, and sheltering bay,
Riches, by Heaven’s parental power supplied, —
The harvest of the far embracing tide.
And, where those fractur’d mountains lift
O’er the blue wave their towering crest,
Each salient ledge and hollow cleft
To sea-fowl give a rugged nest.
But with instinctive love is drest
The Eider’s downy cradle; where
The mother-bird, her glossy breast
Devotes, and with maternal care,
And plumeless bosom, stems the toiling seas,
That foam round the tempestuous Orcades.
From heights, whence shuddering sense recoils,
And cloud-capped headlands, steep and bare,
Sons of the North! your venturous toils
Collect your poor and scanty fare.
Urged by imperious Want, you dare
Scale the loose cliff, where Gannets hide,
Or scarce suspended, in the air
Hang perilous; and thus provide
The soft voluptuous couch, which not secures
To Luxury’s pamper’d minions, sleep like yours.
Revolving still, the waves that now
Just ripple on the level shore,
Have borne perchance the Indian’s prow,
Or half congeal’d, ‘mid ice rocks hoar,
Raved to the Walrus’ hollow roar;
Or have by currents swift convey’d
To the cold coast of Labrador,
The relics of the tropic shade;
And to the wondering Esquimaux have shown
Leaves of strange shape, and fruits unlike their own.
No more then, let the incurious say,
No change this world of water shows,
But as the tides the moon obey,
Or tempests rave, or calms repose. —
Shew them, its bounteous breast bestows
On myriads life; and bid them see
In every wave that circling flows,
Beauty and use, and harmony —
Works of the Power Supreme, who poured the flood,
Round the green peopled earth, and call’d it good!
THE HOROLOGE OF THE FIELDS.
Addressed to a Young Lady, on seeing
at the House of an Acquaintance a magnificent French Timepiece.
FOR her who owns this splendid toy,
Where use with elegance unites,
Still may its index point to joy,
And moments wing’d with new delights.
Sweet may resound each silver bell, —
And never quick returning chime,
Seem in reproving notes to tell,
Of hours mispent, and murder’d time.
Tho’ Fortune, Emily, deny
To us these splendid works of art,
The woods, the lawns, the heaths supply
Lessons from Nature to the heart.
In every copse, and shelter’d dell,
Unveil’d to the observant eye,
Are faithful monitors, who tell
How pass the hours and seasons by.
The green robed children of the Spring
Will mark the periods as they pass,
Mingle with leaves Time’s feather’d wing,
And bind with flowers his silent glass.
Mark where transparent waters glide,
Soft flowing o’er their tranquil bed;
There, cradled on the dimpling tide,
Nymphæa rests her lovely head.
But conscious of the earliest beam,
She rises from her humid rest,
And sees reflected in the stream
The virgin whiteness of her breast.
Till the bright daystar to the west
Declines, in Ocean’s surge to lave,
Then folded in her modest vest,
She slumbers on the rocking wave.
See Hieracium’s various tribe,
Of plumy seed and radiate flowers,
The course of Time their blooms describe
And wake or sleep appointed hours.
Broad o’er its imbricated cup
The Goatsbeard spreads its golden rays,
But shuts its cautious petals up,
Retreating from the noon-tide blaze:
Pale as a pensive cloister’d nun
The Bethlem-star, her face unveils,
When o’er the mountain peers the Sun,
But shades it from the vesper gales.
Among the loose and arid sands
The humble Arenaria creeps;
Slowly the purple star expands,
But soon within its calyx sleeps.
And those small bells so lightly ray’d
With young Aurora’s rosy hue,
Are to the noon-tide Sun display’d,
But shut their plaits against the dew.
On upland slopes the shepherds mark
The hour, when as the dial true,
Cichorium to the towering Lark,
Lifts her soft eyes, serenely blue.
And thou “Wee crimson tipped flower,”
Gatherest thy fringed mantle round
Thy bosom, at the closing hour,
When night drops bathe the turfy ground.
Unlike Silene, who declines
The garish noontide’s blazing light;
But when the evening crescent shines
Gives all her sweetness to the night.
Thus in each flower and simple bell,
That in our path untrodden lie,
Are sweet remembrancers who tell
How fast the winged moments fly.
Time will steal on with ceaseless pace,
Yet lose we not the fleeting hours,
Who still their fairy footsteps trace,
As light they dance among the flowers.
SAINT MONICA.
AMONG deep woods is the dismantled scite
Of an old Abbey, where the chaunted rite,
By twice ten brethren of the monkish cowl,
Was duly sung; and requiems for the soul
Of the first founder: For the lordly chief,
Who flourish’d paramount of many a fief,
Left here a stipend yearly paid, that they,
The pious monks, for his repose might say
Mass and orisons to Saint Monica.
Beneath the falling archway overgrown
With briars, a bench remains, a single stone,
Where sat the indigent, to wait the dole
Given at the buttery; that the baron’s soul
The poor might intercede for; there would rest,
Known by his hat of straw with cockles drest,
And staff and humble weed of watchet gray,
The wandering pilgrim; who came there to pray
The intercession of Saint Monica.
Stern Reformation and the lapse of years
Have reft the windows, and no more appears
Abbot or martyr on the glass anneal’d;
And half the falling cloisters are conceal’d
By ash and elder: the refectory wall
Oft in the storm of night is heard to fall,
When, wearied by the labours of the day,
The half awaken’d cotters, starting say,
“It is the ruins of Saint Monica.”
Now with approaching rain is heard the rill,
Just trickling thro’ a deep and hollow gill
By osiers, and the alder’s crowding bush,
Reeds, and dwarf elder, and the pithy rush,
Choak’d and impeded: to the lower ground
Slowly it creeps; there traces still are found
Of hollow squares, embank’d with beaten clay,
Where brightly glitter’d in the eye of day
The peopled waters of Saint Monica.
The chapel pavement, where the name and date,
Or monkish rhyme, had mark’d the graven plate,
With docks and nettles now is overgrown;
And brambles trail above the dead unknown. —
Impatient of the heat, the straggling ewe
Tinkles her drowsy bell, as nibbling slow
She picks the grass among the thistles gray,
Whose feather’d seed the light air bears away,
O’er the pale relicks of Saint Monica.
Reecho’d by the walls, the owl obscene
Hoots to the night; as thro’ the ivy green
Whose matted tods the arch and buttress bind,
Sobs in low gusts the melancholy wind:
The Conium there, her stalks bedropp’d with red,
Rears, with Circea, neighbour of the dead;
Atropa too, that, as the beldams say,
Shews her black fruit to tempt and to betray,
Nods by the mouldering shrine of Monica.
Old tales and legends are not quite forgot.
Still Superstition hovers o’er the spot,
And tells how here, the wan and restless sprite,
By some way-wilder’d peasant seen at night,
Gibbers and shrieks, among the ruins drear;
And how the friar’s lanthorn will appear
Gleaming among the woods, with fearful ray,
And from the church-yard take its wavering way,
To the dim arches of Saint Monica.
The antiquary comes not to explore,
As once, the unrafter’d roof and pathless floor;
For now, no more beneath the vaulted ground
Is crosier, cross, or sculptur’d chalice found,
Nor record telling of the wassail ale,
What time the welcome summons to regale,
Given by the matin peal on holiday,
The villagers rejoicing to obey,
Feasted, in honour of Saint Monica.
Yet often still at eve, or early morn,
Among these ruins shagg’d with fern and thorn,
A pensive stranger from his lonely seat
Observes the rapid martin, threading fleet
The broken arch: or follows with his eye,
The wall-creeper that hunts the burnish’d fly;
Sees the newt basking in the sunny ray,
Or snail that sinuous winds his shining way,
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O’er the time-fretted walls of Monica.
He comes not here, from the sepulchral stone
To tear the oblivious pall that Time has thrown,
But meditating, marks the power proceed
From the mapped lichen, to the plumed weed,
From thready mosses to the veined flower,
The silent, slow, but ever active power
Of Vegetative Life, that o’er Decay
Weaves her green mantle, when returning May
Dresses the ruins of Saint Monica.
Oh Nature! ever lovely, ever new,
He whom his earliest vows has paid to you
Still finds, that life has something to bestow;
And while to dark Forgetfulness they go,
Man, and the works of man; immortal Youth,
Unfading Beauty, and eternal Truth,
Your Heaven-indited volume will display,
While Art’s elaborate monuments decay,
Even as these shatter’d aisles, deserted Monica!
A WALK IN THE SHRUBBERY.
To the Cistus or Rock Rose, a beautiful plant, whose flowers expand, and fall off twice in twenty-four hours.
THE Florists, who have fondly watch’d,
Some curious bulb from hour to hour,
And, to ideal charms attach’d,
Derive their glory from a flower;
Or they, who lose in crouded rooms,
Spring’s tepid suns and balmy air,
And value Flora’s fairest blooms,
But in proportion as they’re rare;
Feel not the pensive pleasures known
To him, who, thro’ the morning mist,
Explores the bowery shrubs new blown,
A moralizing Botanist. —
He marks, with colours how profuse
Some are design’d to please the eye;
While beauty some combine with use,
In admirable harmony.
The fruit buds, shadow’d red and white,
Amid young leaves of April hue;
Convey sensations of delight,
And promise fruits autumnal too:
Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works Page 23